Responding to the original topic, I don't think too much about ages when responding to people on the Pfhorums

Certainly their way of writing gives me an inkling as to their age, but I try not to let that influence my response.

I would never talk to people of extremely different ages as I do on here because, for one, I am not as good at formulating quick responses on the fly as I am writing out a textual passage. The in-person age difference matters since if I was speaking to one who was very young, for example, I might have to shorten my sentences and simplify the language. If I were speaking in person to one who was older, I might have to speak louder, and STILL simplify my language, but for a completely different reason.

So on the Pfhorums I ignore all this stuff, and write responses how I want too. If they does not understand, they can look it up; the internet is a wonderful thing. If they wrote an ignorant sounding question, I resist the urge to flame them and either help them, ask for more information casually or ignore it and don't reply.

I think the freedom of posting is great, and as for being socially acceptable, I guess that only really works if you know the person or have a sense of gain or loss from how you act with that person (influencing your decisions).

On a different note, I find that occasionally I make assumptions based on people's avatars and signatures, since without any formal idea who one is, I use what is available, good or bad. (Thinking people are girls because they have girl avatars, happen to anyone? )

thermoplyae wrote:the point I wanted to make is that this is something that happens internally, has nothing to do with social skills or cues or rules or tolerance. It is just thinking and maybe a tiny bit of patience.

It often does have to do with social cues and tolerance; people who are newbies may not understand how to communicate properly using only text in a forum situation. They may also read other people's comments incorrectly, and will think that the person was implying something that they weren't or not implying something that they were (which sometimes happens even to people who aren't newbies).

That being said, I totally agreed with all of your post before that one, if you thought I was arguing against you.

EDIT:

Zott wrote:On a different note, I find that occasionally I make assumptions based on people's avatars and signatures, since without any formal idea who one is, I use what is available, good or bad. (Thinking people are girls because they have girl avatars, happen to anyone?)

Why is it that W'rk can shitpost all he likes, but if I make one mean/ignorant comment, I burn for a week? Also, Ryoko, who are you to judge what shitposts are? I think some of your posts in this thread were meant to humiliate Dugit (who probably still respects you, by the way.) and they did not contribute much to the thread. Wouldn't that be a shitpost? Granted, it was a long, well formatted shitpost, but that does not change its state. You're getting all over his ass for expanding his vocabulary on the fly, and then you called everyone a baby. This is probably not the first forum most people have been on, its the first one with this strange environment where you get destroyed for making a rookie mistake.

Zott wrote:(Thinking people are girls because they have girl avatars, happen to anyone? )

Yes, that has happened to me, on more than one occasion.

And, since I feel it is relevant, I will post this: Today, i found out that a kid i regularly communicate with is 12. I had always assumed him to be roughly my age. Why? His posts were always mature and thought out. He never flamed someone, or was overly critical. His abilities related to the forum were also helpful, as he is among the best.

I also found out today that a kid i just met (internet-wise) is 14. I had previously assumed him to be 10 or 11. Why? His posts were shit. Lots of HEY GUYS HEY GYUS! YOU SHOULD GO HERE! and arguing in battles he had lost. The immaturity was stifling.

Point: I treat the 12 year old like he's an adult. I treat the 14 year old like my 7 year old brother.

Envy wrote:You're getting all over his ass for expanding his vocabulary on the fly, and then you called everyone a baby.

The issue has always been that he's "expanding" his "vocabulary" incorrectly. When I meet anyone, online or not, who uses a large number of words they don't understand the meaning of to seem intelligent it drops my opinion of them drastically. If you don't criticize people who do that, they're bound to continue doing it and keep making an ass out of themself. You criticize them to help them, not because you enjoy seeing them in discomfort.

Envy wrote:I think some of your posts in this thread were meant to humiliate Dugit (who probably still respects you, by the way.) and they did not contribute much to the thread. Wouldn't that be a shitpost? Granted, it was a long, well formatted shitpost, but that does not change its state.

I think that you're misinterpreting the criticism of some of the members here. The criticism you're talking about is rarely, if ever intended to 'humiliate' a member. It's simply an attempt to get them to realize their own behaviour, and when necessary change it. The problem is that some of the members here don't seem to be capable of realizing how poorly they behave and continue the same behaviour to the same harassment.

If not for the humiliation, then just for fun. A simple "you used that word wrong, fix it" thing. If you get ticked off on that scale when someone uses words incorrectly, you need to go to a mental hospital.EditOH W'RK! Thats right! you have a crude depiction of a shit stick! that makes it ok.

Envy wrote:If not for the humiliation, then just for fun. A simple "you used that word wrong, fix it" thing. If you get ticked off on that scale when someone uses words incorrectly, you need to go to a mental hospital.

Again, you completely miss the point of what has been said. It has been pointed out several times, the first of which were more along the lines of 'you used that word wrong, fix it'. Usually if you are a bit more critical of a mistake there will be more impact on them, so when Dugit continued to misuse words people became more critical of him. The problem is that after continued criticism nothing changed. I'm only using Dugit's misuse of words as an example because it's one of the more obvious examples, but it is definitely not the only example of a member here exhibiting poor behaviour.

You would have to be exceptionally ignorant to think that new members are treated unfairly here. There may be higher expectations in terms of the behaviour of the users of this forum, but that really shouldn't matter. There are and have been many new members here who are treated very well, and that's because they behave well. If people take criticism poorly, through getting angry or being extremely hurt by it then it's a character flaw on their part, and not the person who criticized them. Marathon itself is a 'mature' game, which is yet another reason why members here won't be treated as babies or young children.

Theres a clear difference between what you (slave) just wrote, and what Ryoko wrote about Dugit. No personal attacks, really. Just an elaborated version of the "you're wrong"Thats all it takes, and I'm starting to agree with you already.

Envy, have you ever tried teaching a mentally retarded kid? I'm being serious here. If you have, you would understand what Ryoko seems to be going through. In order to teach one with mental disabilities, you must reiterate your teachings constantly, requiring a high level of patience. Take, for example, my physics teacher's best friend. She was a special ed teacher for a single student, from Kindergarten to eighth grade. Her toleration for a lack of understanding was extremely high, so she persevered. For many years, she had to reteach many basic math concepts, grammar rules, spelling, and social skills. During the day one day, she suddenly broke down. She had had it. She went into a bathroom and would have committed suicide if she hadn't been called to go help my physics teacher.

Now in my experiences, I get frustrated quickly. When someone doesn't understand a concept that I have a firm grasp on and have had a firm grasp on for many years, I start to get angry. I try to shove the information down their throats and end up just stopping. Hell, this doesn't only apply to retarded children. My sister, for the first semester of pre-algebra in seventh grade couldn't comprehend that (-) times (-) equals (+). Eventually, my mom and I just told her to accept the fact and work on her homework. She still insisted on asking why, even though I had explained it to her many times.

Do you understand the frustration that goes on when people don't learn?

WastdJamacan wrote:Do you understand the frustration that goes on when people don't learn?

I understand, but people make mistakes nonetheless. My flagrant misuse of words, however, I understand is somewhat of a recurring irritation, and for which I am sorry. I still respect the Pfhorums elders, and I still respect the general way in which the Pfhorums work. I understand my saga of errors, and I wish to bring a halt to it. If it happens again, then I am sorry in advance.

I think generally the problem is new users don't know how intelligent their posts have to be. In real life, in some circumstances, it is allowed to say anything that pops up in your mind, and in others it's best to say only the highly necessary. A forum like this doesn't resemble any situation in real life and is even different from other internet places like chatrooms and pigeon lounges. When I first came here, I used to make quite a lot of unnecessary posts as well, but quickly learned not to. The responses I got, however, were often a bit more harsh than necessary (I'm afraid I've made myself guilty to similar harshness by now). Maybe we should just warn all new users somehow that they have to think before posting, that a higher level is expected than in informal conversations.

@L'howon: it is indeed useful to spell things correctly, but keep in mind that over 50% of humanity doesn't speak English natively

Why is it that W'rk can shitpost all he likes, but if I make one mean/ignorant comment, I burn for a week?

I've never defended Wrk's shitposting, I just don't harass him about it here because we're both always in #alephone.

Also, Ryoko, who are you to judge what shitposts are? I think some of your posts in this thread were meant to humiliate Dugit (who probably still respects you, by the way.) and they did not contribute much to the thread. Wouldn't that be a shitpost? Granted, it was a long, well formatted shitpost, but that does not change its state.

You, Dugit, and WJ all have this ridiculous penchant for waxing dramatic as soon as anyone stops being tolerant of your games. It's always nonsense like humiliation and torment and shit like that. Believe it or not, that's not at all what anyone has in mind; I just have had my fill of Dugit's abuse of the English language and his thoughtless posting in general. If that's what you consider humiliation then the Internet is not a good place for you to be.

Also, I'm the perfect judge of what shitposting is because until now I've been the only one in this topic using the term. And since one could probably glean from context that "shitposting" refers to this vacuous, contentless posting that you're all guilty of, the one post of mine that could barely even be construed as an attack on Dugit isn't a shitpost at all.

And if you think I'm actually out there to ruin Dugit's internet experience then I wouldn't have spent any time on my review of his map pack.

You're getting all over his ass for expanding his vocabulary on the fly

He does this all the time which is why I'm on his ass about it now. I was helpful about it earlier but he's now shown that he just wants to pretend to be smart rather than actually be smart. This has been a continuing war against his broken vocabulary. (This is something that you will get sick of very quickly if you end up going to university.)

and then you called everyone a baby.

So did you actually read my post at all? Because I was pretty much explicitly not calling people babies with that Fisher-Price comment.

That's... odd. But why can't he just stop if there's no reason to carry on?

You should complain to $lave about not deleting his posts then, because I deleted more than a couple Wrk posts when I was admin.

Dugit wrote:I understand, but people make mistakes nonetheless. My flagrant misuse of words, however, I understand is somewhat of a recurring irritation, and for which I am sorry. I still respect the Pfhorums elders, and I still respect the general way in which the Pfhorums work. I understand my saga of errors, and I wish to bring a halt to it. If it happens again, then I am sorry in advance.

Vale,Dugit

And I wish to bring an end to this pointless farce.

I understand why Ryoko is so angry at me, and I accept it. I still respect the olders of the forum, and that's not going to change unless something awful happens to me on their behalf. I'm just expressing that sometimes (admittedly more than others) I make vocabulary mistakes, and in most cases, they are weak and pointless motions to make myself sound more generally mature than I am. I am sorry for this saga of error, and I wish to apologize to all those who feel affected.

Drictelt wrote:@L'howon: it is indeed useful to spell things correctly, but keep in mind that over 50% of humanity doesn't speak English natively

This is actually a really good thing to keep in mind. I've kept myself from being an real jerk many times by pausing a moment and assuming maybe this guy isn't a native speaker. Sometimes guys like Zott or Megabyte get away with murder, but mostly it allows speakers of other languages to feel comfortable.

EDIT: Although I'm pretty sure the actual figure of people who speak American natively is more like 92% of the world.